Here’s how the entries will be handled:
+1 entry for setting a goal and participating (publicly)
+1 entry for every day you log your writing progress
+5 entries for every week you HIT your weekly writing goal
+3 entries for every person you invite to join the WB (who joins!) between now and the end of the month*

+2 entries if you Tweet or blog about the WB*

*You will have to let me know if you invited someone and they joined or if you’ve blogged/Tweeted about the WB—I’m not a mindreader!

At the end of the month, I’ll have you tally your entries, send them to me, and I’ll pick two winners.

A few weeks ago, one of the members of my online writing community [Shenandoah Writers Online] approached me about starting up a satellite chapter of our group. I have SW(IRL) [Shenandoah Writers (In Real Life)], and she wanted to have something in her area of the country [the Pacific Northwest].

Introducing . . . the WB!

However, with the name of the online group being associated with the Shenandoah River Valley, said member suggested I change the name to be more inclusive.

I had two reactions:

1.) It’s an online group—and *most* SWOers aren’t from the Shenandoah Valley, so what does it matter what the name is? If Marice can be one of us from Brisbane, Aus., then why do we need to change it?

2.) ZOMG. What she’s asking me to do is start a writing organization.

The more I thought about that, however, the more I realized I *already had* started a writing organization. And, while it seemed a bit scary to think of it in that way, my mind started going ping! ping! ping!, and it all sort of clicked into place.

When I started the online writing community, my goal was to bring writers together. I wasn’t meeting a ton of writers in my area [I’d just moved to a new city and state], and I wanted to connect with other write-brained peeps and stay in touch with those I’d met at writers’ conferences.

As well, a big part of my love for writing is teaching people how to write and seeking advice from others who know more about it than I do. I learn about my writing during both of those interactions—we all do. Each connection we make enriches us that much more.

All that corniness [which I totally mean, actually] aside, I realized I have a “vision” for Shenandoah Writers Online. That’s why, starting now, we will be known as “The Write-Brained Network” [or “the WB,” as I’ll nerdily be calling it]. We even have a new URL!

While we’re not going to be morphing into something completely different, we’re going to build our skyscraper on the great foundation we already have. :) I’ve put a few things in place in order for that to happen—changing our name is just step one.

And, perhaps it’s a bit premature to state this, but I would like to have our own IRL conference sometime down the line. That’s the five-year plan anyway. Will it happen overnight? Absolutely not. But the wheels are turning, and I just happen to live in one of the most gorgeous, most peaceful spots in the country—in the Massanutten ski resort. That has a conference center. And a BAJILLION rental properties.

We’re still going to be free to join, and we’re still going to offer all the same cool stuff as before—but now that our numbers are getting bigger, I think our scope should as well. We have reached more people than I thought possible at our inception eight months ago, and I can’t wait to see where we’re going.

I’m leaving for the Romance Writers of America national conference (in Orlando!) Wednesday, and I have—oh, I don’t know—a bajillion things to do between now and then. So I’m not sure I’ll be as available as I’d like in terms of blogging and such, but I do plan to keep you posted throughout the week/weekend on my experiences.

Hey, Angela . . . I have a lot of crap to do this week!

For instance, I hope to regale you with tales of all the awesomesauce things I’m doing and learning—and all the faboo people I’m meeting.

I mean, I’ve already been invited to sing karaoke with my Twitter soulmate (or Twitsom, as we now call each other), Cambria Dillon and some other cool chicas. So, that should be a decent story, right?

Um—did I mention Twitsom and I haven’t met yet? But we share a love of all things YA, Sour Patch Watermelons, and triathlon-doing husbands, so I’m not worried. We are going to rip on Tim Tebow and sing Lady Gaga, and all will be well with the world.

Unless, of course, we discover we are actually the same person . . . which could be the case? There’s a SFF story just waiting to be written! But I’ll let you know once I meet her Wednesday. :)

IN OTHER NEWS

HOLY CRAP—MEG CABOT IS GOING TO BE AT RWA!!!! So, I’m basically dying. And my flight gets in at almost the *end* of one of her author signings, so I’m dying in a different way over that. <frownies> But I’m hoping to stalk catch her another time during the conference.

Tonight—Monday, July 26—I’ll be hosting a live chat on Shenandoah Writers Online (from 9-10 P.M. EST.). The topic is writers’ conferences. Bring any and all questions you have about conferences to the chat—and, if you’ve attended any such functions, we’d love to have you share your experiences!

To enter the chat, simply log into Shenandoah Writers Online and click “Group Chat” at the bottom right of the main screen.

You must be a member of Shenandoah Writers Online to participate in the chat, but we’d love to have you join.*

OK, that’s all for now. Writing this blog post wasn’t even on my list—yeeks!

You know, I sort of think this is kind of a fabulous blog post. Writer and part-time doctor Lydia Kang of The Word is My Oyster says: Stop apologizing! Chuck that qualifying language and strengthen your writing.

I’m a little behind with my Blogosphere posts—I saved this one two months ago!!—but it’s too good not to share. Young adult fantasy author Jodi Meadows of the Query Projectgave us a gift on her birthday: the query she wrote for Erin Incarnate that helped her snag fab agent Lauren MacLeod of the Strothman Agency.

If you’re looking for something just as satisfying but a little more flexible and a little more long-term, check out my new writing SWO program, WordWatchers. Pick a weekly word count goal, and divvy up the words written per day in a way that fits your schedule!

OMG

In honor of Eclipse coming out this week . . . if you thought the people who stand in lines for twelve hours to see the Twilight movies were wonky, you weren’t wrong—but there are wonkier folks out there. Here, Great White Snark gives us a dozen such psychopaths.

If you missed the chat, or if you were there but it was too buggy to keep up (sorry!), here are the highlights:

THE GIST

At the start of the chat, attendees posted either their own story openings or the openings of their favorite books. This was not meant to be a critique session (although a little of that went on); rather, we pointed out what the reader learns from each opening and what makes each opening successful or not.

This led to talk about what it means to have a “successful” opening. It’s subjective, of course; but, for the most part, we agreed that in order to deem a story opening a success, it has to hook the reader in some way—because, while readers mightgive the author a few chapters before giving up, agents pretty much won’t. Translation: Your opening needs to do something—and right away.

As we looked at real examples, we noted that the best ones oriented the reader. As one member put it, an opening has to service your narrative in a clear way.

The best openings were those that:

Showed voice

Gave context

Displayed character insight

Raised questions

WAYS TO ORIENT THE READER

Work in age the main character’s age—especially important if you’re writing children’s or YA

Pay close attention to voice and diction here, as that can be very telling

Hone in on structure and pacing (i.e., if it’s supposed to be a tense action scene, your sentence structure and punctuation

What's my motivation?

should mimic that)

Indicate genre or story type

Injecting setting can do this (i.e., placing your characters in the woods might suggest it’s fantasy)

Names can do this (i.e., if a character’s name is “Zender,” like in one of the examples we analyzed, that gives the sense it’s sci-fi or fantasy—more so than if the dude’s name is “Bob”)

Indicate protag’s goals/motivations (i.e., if it starts off talking about a dungeon escape, the reader might deduce it’s probably not contemporary fiction)

THINGS TO AVOID

Avoid gimmicks

Like the “fake-out” beginning (where you set it up to look like one thing is true, but you read the rest of the page and discover it isn’t. Many agents—Nathan Bransford, for one—shy away from the “gotcha” opener)

Probably don’t start with poetry

You don’t need to start with a fireworks display—particularly if you can’t follow it up anything

If you do this, it can come off as “gimmicky”

EXAMPLE

Opening of Stephen King’s Gunslinger series:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

This tells so much without saying anything at all, really

Good guy vs. bad guy

A chase—an escape

In many ways, this one line serves as a microcosm for the entire series.

MORE, PLEASE!

Up-and-coming YA author Jodi Meadows was kind enough to send me her opening to the first book in her New Soul trilogy, Erin Incarnate. I have posted her thoughts it on Shenandoah Writers Online under the “Files” tab at the top of the main page. In the file, Jodi shows her original opening and talks about the changes her agent wanted her to implement—and why making those changes made her opening stronger.

We also indicated you can probably play devil’s advocate for each of these suggestions or cite counter examples in published books. However, it’s important to remember we’re trying to establish some “rules” here—not exceptions. As well, we’re talking about writers trying to break into the industry given today’s market—not established authors whose books are going to sell a bajillion copies no matter what they write.

As frequent readers of this blog may know, I am the coordinator of Shenandoah Writers—a “real-life” writing/critique group located in Harrisonburg, Va.—and Shenandoah Writers Online—a writing community open to writers of all genres and levels, currently with upwards of 50 members located all over the U.S. and one in Australia (we’re basically global :) ).

This Tuesday, June 29, from 9-10 P.M. EST, I will be hosting our monthly SWO live chat on Shenandoah Writers Online.* Our chats sometimes run over, if we feel so inclined, but the “official” time for this event is from 9-10 P.M.

This month’s topic: Blogs & Blogging

Come with your questions and/or expertise in this exploding area of social media.

Since last month’s chat, the Grou.ps network seems to have fixed some bugs and added some new features to the chat function—like chatting within the group, conducting private chats between yourself and another member & going “online” and “offline” in terms of chatting). I’m hoping that means it won’t stick as much as it did last time.

Even if you can only stop by for a few minutes, it’d be good to have you poke your head in and say hello.**

—

*For more information about SWO, click on “Shenandoah Writers” in “Categories” in the right-hand side bar.

**You must be a member of SWO to participate in the chat. Not a member yet? E-mail me or click here to get started.

I’m hosting a live chat this Tuesday, May 25, from 9-10 P.M. EST on Shenandoah Writers Online.*

Our chats sometimes run over, if we feel so inclined, but the “official” time for this event is from 9-10 P.M. Even if you can only stop by for a few minutes, it’d be good to have you poke your head in and say hello.**

TOPIC

We discussed story openers at the last Shenandoah Writers (IRL) meeting, and I’d like to further that conversation with the online group.

WHAT TO BRING

It would be great if you brought the opening line or lines of something you’ve written as well as the opening line or lines from one of your favorite books.

I would like to discuss what makes these openers successful (i.e., what hooks the reader, what we learn in the opening, etc.) as well as what we think are the elements of a successful opener.

This will also give participants a chance to workshop their own opening lines/paragraphs with the group and gain some feedback.

EXAMPLE

Here is one of the openings I’m bringing:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

What do we learn from this opening?

We gain some insight into the characters of the Dursleys:

J.K. Rowling (yes, this is the opening line to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) straight out tells us they are “normal” and happy to be so. “Perfectly” in front of “normal” and the “thank you very much” shows that they are a bit snooty—it gives a sense of being uppity (a.k.a. we’re getting voice here).

Just from this first line, we learn the Dursleys are the type of people who don’t like their feathers ruffled—they like to maintain decorum. They feel strange and mysterious things are nonsensical.

The first part of the second line (“They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious”) suggests to the reader that, although you wouldn’t expect them to be involved in something like that, they were involved in something like that. Thus, the juxtaposition of these opposites—normal and strange—hooks the reader. We want to know what it is they are involved in—and how these uppity people will deal with it/cover it up.

That’s just a taste. I’ve posted some other novel openers—including my two novel openers—in “Files” on the SWO site, so please feel free to take a look. If you’re not a member, see below to get started.

QUESTION

What do you think makes a good opening?

If you can’t make it to the chat but would like to get in on the conversation, please leave your thoughts in the comments of this post.

—

*For more information about SWO, click on “Shenandoah Writers” in “Categories” in the right-hand side bar.

**You must be a member of SWO to participate in the chat. Not a member yet? E-mail me or click here to get started.

Like this:

Last night, at the May 18 Shenandoah Writers (IRL) meeting, we covered several topics.

SWO LIVE CHAT

May 25—9-10P.M. on Shenandoah Writers Online

I’m open to topic suggestions. If you have any, please let me know ASAP.

CRITIQUING

Changes to the critiquing schedule

We are going to cover one person’s work at each of the next several meetings, instead of two. This is because we don’t want to short-change the second person being critiqued at a given meeting (by rushing it, etc.)—plus, we don’t want to spend the whole time critiquing, when I’m sure there will be other things to discuss.

Page limit for critiques

When you’re up for critique, submit the first two chapters, not to exceed 20 pages. For essays or short stories, just send the whole thing.

Awesome cartoon by Debbie Ridpath Ohi, from Inkygirl.com

How to send

Person being critiqued must e-mail the group a copy of his/her critique submission no later than one week before the next meeting (so, you have up to a week to get your crit submission together and then the rest of us have a week to read it/comment)

When you send your crit piece, make sure you are sending a .doc file, so we are all able to open it.

E-mail being sent to all members with everyone’s email addresses

How to critique

Dave brought in some awesome handouts of not only constructive ways to critique but also areas in which to critique. When he sends me the files, I will post them in the forum on the SWO network, so we can all access them.

We agreed that all critiquers need to have a hard copy of the critique submission printed out & brought with them to the meeting. This means each person will need to print out his/her own copy prior to coming to the meeting.

Ideally, you will have read and commented right on the submission before each meeting.

At the meetings, either the author or someone else (I don’t mind doing this for everyone) will read the submission out loud, so the author can hear how it sounds/catch awkward or unwieldy sentences and so everyone can have the piece fresh in his/her mind. This will also enable critiquers to write down more notes as the piece is being read.

Each critiquer will discuss positive comments and constructive criticism on how to improve/clarify/etc.

At the end of the critique session, each member will hand in his/her hard copy to the author so he/she has something concrete for reference when revising.

Openings assignment

After we hammered out the details, we spent some time going through various novel openers and what we learned about the book from them.

This was a little awkward to do with just three of us, but I think it went OK over all.

I would also like to discuss journalistic writing & freelancing a bit after we critique because I will be putting together my class on that subject for the Southeastern Writers Association at the end of June.

Anything you think I should include, I’m all ears.

I would also like to know what writers unfamiliar with or new to how to approach journalistic writing & freelancing NEED TO KNOW—so bring any questions you have as well.

For those new to the blog, I just had to move my online writing group from Ning to Grou.ps, and the new network is buggy: I tried to send a reminder about the chat to all SWO members today to no avail (I found out that feature has been defunct the last two days—grr!), one of my regular attendees couldn’t access the network at the time of the chat, as well as a host of other wonky things with the new site.

Eeeeeeeeh - the site is buggy, Doc!

Overall, I’ve been impressed with Grou.ps. After all, it can’t be easy for them to accommodate the Great Ning Exodus of 2010. They have a tech support group for administrators, which has been helpful to me, and they seem to be actively taking care of buggy things as people report them. However, don’t mess with my chat!

I suspect they’ll have all the kinks worked out before the May chat. (I hope! I hope!)

THE GIST

If you missed our chat on revision and rewriting tonight for whatever reason, here are the highlights:

Re: Revision & Rewriting: What’s Your Process & How Do You Know When to Stop?

We discussed a method of editing I use: editor Bobbie Christmas’s “Find and Refine Method” as outlined in her out-of-print book, Write in Style: Using Your Word Processor and Other Techniques to Improve Your Writing

In the book, Christmas discusses how to tighten your writing and lists words and phrases you can search for within your manuscript to quickly find the problematic areas—all using your word processor’s “find” function (i.e., passive verbs, adverbs, certain words and phrases writers often overuse, etc.)

One member mentioned a CD called Writer’s Mind, which is designed to engage patterns of your own EEG and stimulate your creativity

We talked about reading your manuscript aloud

Doing this not only makes others think you are strange, but it also enables you to catch spelling/grammar mistakes as well as pinpoint problematic syntax, etc.

We touched how allowing space/distance between yourself and your manuscript is key

If you are too close, you’re not going to catch as many errors—your brain kind of fills in missed words, etc.

We debated how much space one needs—how much distance—and this, of course, is subjective

Some felt sleeping on it and revisiting the manuscript the next day was sufficient

One person suggested you not live, touch, or breathe the MS for at least a month before editing

Some mentioned sending the piece to beta readers and working on something else to get your mind off said manuscript

By the time the betas have read it, you should be sufficiently recharged

Make like Michael Strahan's front teeth, and get some space between you and your MS!

This led to a discussion about beta readers—Re: where to find them and how to know if you can “trust” someone to give you constructive feedback

One of my favorite comments of the chat: “Beta readers = fellow writers. Avid readers. Not Mom, Not Dad. No one you’ve slept with.” :)

Re: How to know if the betas are going to be any good

We pretty much agreed that it’s a crap shoot

You want to be on the lookout for someone with a “good eye”

You might establish this by getting a feel for the person through e-mails, chats—get to know them—see if they’re a good fit—research them. THEN, make your decision.

One member said he has his betas complete a questionnaire so he can elicit constructive feedback—a very interesting way to guide the beta reader to focus on whatever you need them to focus on!

You could also pick up a beta at a pet store for, like, a dollar.

Re: How to know when to stop editing

We pretty much said it can be kind of a gut thing

My rule: When you’ve revised so many times that you hate yourself—and your manuscript—and you feel like you might physically die if someone made you look at it again, then you *might* be done . . . but you should probably still have someone else look at it at that point. Get that distance we mentioned.

Rappers from the '90s have surprisingly good advice for revising. (It was a toss up between this and one with "Stop - Hammertime" spray-painted on it.)

Re: Miscellaneous

We discovered that the new chat has awesome—but random—emoticons that we just stumbled upon

For example, by typing “(rain)”, a raincloud appears in place of the words—WHA?

This distracted us several times.

We discussed light versus edgy YA, as a few of us learned we had been hearing similar comments from agents about our MSS.

Marice decided she’s going to host a writing conference at her place Down Under. ;)